Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Tough Times Call for Tough Aphorisms

To be born in the United States is to have won the cosmic lottery. However, the left is not only oblivious to this pleasant fact, but determined to do something about it.

When a leftist begins a sentence with the lamentation that We're the only industrialized nation that..., it's time to reach for your revolver. It never occurs to them that we are the greatest nation that has ever existed because we are the only one that doesn't do that retarded shit. But the left won't be happy until we are as miserable as Greece.

Tough times call for tough aphorisms. Either because I am lazy or ambitious, I'm going to review my lengthy collection of Don Colacho-isms, with a particular focus on how to survive our Fundamental Transformation from the only industrialized nation that doesn't to the last one that did. The aphorisms are in italics, my commentary isn't.

Liberty is the right to be different; equality is a ban on being different

Or just say Diversity, for what is diversity but mandatory consent to left wing twaddle? Liberal equality used to mean the same rules apply to all. But that naturally results in unequal outcomes, so now they insist on unequal rules in order to ensure equal outcomes. But giving a college degree to a person with an IQ of 85 doesn't magically increase it to 115. Nevertheless, we must pretend it does.

The bourgeoisie is any group of individuals dissatisfied with what they have and satisfied with what they are.

Boom. Here again, the left has no interest in maintaining standards of achievement, because that would result in low "self-esteem" for those who cannot meet the standards.

This is the basis of Justice Kennedy's extra-constitutional whim to redefine marriage: people falling outside that definition might feel bad, so we have to change the standard. They still can't be married, but at least they now have the word, just as Cornell West has a Ph.D., and people on Medicare have a theoretical "access to healthcare." They may die trying to find a doctor who will accept Medicare, but the boost to liberal self-esteem is incalculable.

The United States is the only industrialized nation that maintains a relationship between wanting and achieving! We have to give people what they want without forcing them to actually earn it. Conservatism is fascism! No, wait. It's just liberty.

Authentic intellectual seriousness does not frown, but smiles.

Entirely true. It is why leftist "intellectuals" are such a dreary bunch of church-lady scolds. Churchill made many statements to the same effect. For example, one thing he dreaded about Nazis was the absence of humor. It seems to me that if they had only been capable of laughing at themselves, we could have avoided unspeakable horrors, as in "look at these silly uniforms. They are so gay!" Likewise, I challenge anyone to find a witty comment by an ISIS member.

Or Obama, for that matter (not his teleprompter, mind you). The left doesn't do understatement. Rather, the insane rhetoric is always turned up to eleven. I remember what Tip O'Neil said about President Reagan: "The evil is in the White House at the present time." (No, not the Soviet Union, because you can never be too far left.) "And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America.... He's cold. He's mean. He's got ice water for blood."

Never mind that the working class did much better under Reagan -- our most conservative modern president -- than under Obama -- our most far left ever. The left doesn't judge outcomes, only its own pure intentions. They frankly can't judge outcomes without ceasing to exist. Thus, judging outcomes is racist-sexist-homophobic. They cut you off before you can even point to them. "But homosexual behavior leads to..." HOMOPHOBE! "But affirmative action only causes..." RACIST! "But lowering standards just to have a Navy SEAL with a vagina will..." SEXIST!

Revolution is progressivist and seeks the strengthening of the state. Rebellion is reactionary and seeks its disappearance.

This is appropriate, with July 4th coming up, for ours was no progressive revolution, but the quintessential reactionary rebellion. It was not to establish new rights but to preserve ancient ones, in particular, from the state. But that won't do, because it puts progressives out of business. Thus, ever since Wilson the left has been trying to eliminate the separation of powers so the State might speak with a single voice and represent the Will of the People.

This is because conservatism has no content per se. It depends on what one is conserving. In our case, we specifically wish to conserve the classical conservative liberalism of our founders.

Which is why modern conservatism really didn't become an articulate movement in the United States until the mid 1950s. Prior to the statism of FDR, it really wasn't necessary. Most of Wilson's damage was undone by Coolidge, but the left -- never missing an opportunity to exploit a crisis -- used the stock market crash of 1929 to create an extended depression which it then proposed to cure. Forever.

Thus, we are all forced to live with 1930s solutions to 21st century problems, e.g., social security. But that is very much like suicide, another permanent solution to a temporary problem. Now we have a permanent problem with no solution, i.e., trillions of dollars of unfundable mandates because of the left's extravagant generosity with other people's money.

With the categories admitted by the modern mind we do not succeed in understanding anything but trifles.

Boy and how. Or as they say in Colombia, aye mamacita! Reduced to thinking within the lines of modernity, I couldn't think at all. Very shortly after receiving my Ph.D., I realized that the rest of my life would simply be more of the same. It is the "last degree," meaning that it is not so much an attainment as confinement. Forced to think in terms of modern psychology, life would hardly be worth living.

For There are no ideas that expand the intelligence, but there are ideas that shrink it. Intelligence is what it is, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. Our intelligence is always condemned to transcend the intelligible, which is why it is here.

It reminds me of the volume knob on a pre-amplifier. It doesn't actually "turn up" the volume. Rather, it is a limiting device that turns it down. You could say that academia is a giant volume knob deployed to turn down intelligence. It is why conservatism is not permitted there, because it would interfere with all the beautiful diversity of monotonous opinion.

Besides, the fool calls conclusions he does not understand 'prejudices'. You don't believe the constitution doesn't grant the Supreme Court the power to redefine marriage? Bigot! Why understand arguments when you can condemn motives?

And the antepenultimate aphorism above goes immediately to this next one: If we could demonstrate the existence of God, everything would eventually be subjected to the sovereignty of man. You might say that because God, we are always free of the left's ideology. Without God, we are trapped inside some hideous ideological gulag with no vertical escape hatch.

10 comments:

But giving a college degree to a person with an IQ of 85 doesn't magically increase it to 115. Nevertheless, we must pretend it does.

If a man can be a woman because in his mind he's female, and if a white woman can be a black woman because in her mind she's black, I see no reason a less intelligent person can't be a more intelligent person if, in his mind, he's a genius. So long as enough of the right people, then it must be true!

Yep. I almost felt sorry for him, looking at the transcript of that interview. Too bad it is likely that none of the locked gears in his head were actually turned a bit as a result of the questioning. Although I give him credit for agreeing to do an interview with Hewitt.

Which is why modern conservatism really didn't become an articulate movement in the United States until the mid 1950s.

It used to be obvious to almost everyone. Hence the term "common sense".

This is what bugs me when I hear the parallel drawn between homosexual marriage and miscegenation laws. There used to be no need for a law against homosexual marriage because the idea was ridiculous. Who would do that? What would you gain?

Strictures against mixed-race marriages, on the other hand, were purely a function of the history and culture. There's no reason people can't be a family just because of ethnic or pigmentation differences.

The Athenians were pretty tolerant of homosexuality, but they would have thought a marriage between two men was some kind of joke. I have a similar view.

"they would have thought a marriage between two men was some kind of joke"

So do many (most?) gay men. They're promiscuous even when "in" a relationship, and they divorce rapidly. This is why the activists among them aren't making strident defenses of monogamy. It isn't about marriage; it never was.

It puzzles me why no one has remarked that what SCOTUS did the other day was to reduce *all* marriage to the level of a temporary contract between two people who have little intention of being faithful to each other.

This strikes me as diminishing marriage, but then, I'm some sort of unreconstructed horror show who, if ever exposed, should be punished into extinction.

It is completely preposterous (which literally means putting end before the beginning), for they wish to ground an unnatural act in a natural right. Which is precisely analogous to a woman's "right to choose," by virtue of being a woman. If that's true, it must be grounded in the right of the female fetus not to be aborted, because natural rights aren't acquired but innate.

Entirely true. It is why leftist "intellectuals" are such a dreary bunch of church-lady scolds. Churchill made many statements to the same effect. For example, one thing he dreaded about Nazis was the absence of humor. It seems to me that if they had only been capable of laughing at themselves, we could have avoided unspeakable horrors, as in "look at these silly uniforms. They are so gay!" Likewise, I challenge anyone to find a witty comment by an ISIS member."

Aye, is there anything more annoying than people consumed by bitterness, envy and rage? These prevent one iota of joy and humor.By rejecting the virtues they become anti-joyous, foolish, petty, vindictive, etc..The left's embrace anti-virtues, because virtues are way too judgemental and way to hard to attain.

Rather than choosing to be receptive to virtue driven slack, the lazy left chooses the laziness of udder folly. Which explains why they are okay with being cattle. The kind of cattle that hates the protection of the cow dogs (or sheep dogs) and loves the wolves that will kill them last...maybe.

It is funny (and pathetic) that all the geniuses of the left can't wrap their minds around the collapse of Greece.I mean, to them the only solution to every problem is Mo Money and regulations. The state that caused this disaster will solve it, with Mo Money!

Just like Wile E. Coyote, the left can't figure out that Acme (the State) IS the problem. My apologies to Wile. E., because at least he had good ideas...mostly.

What About Bob?

Who spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Who is your nonlocal partner in disorganized crimethink? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!

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Late last night, in search of light, I watched a ball of fire streak across the midnight sky. I watched it glow, then grow, then shrink, then sink into the silhouette of morning. As I watched it die, I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a lot in common with that light.’ That’s right. I’m alive with the fire of my life, which streaks across my span of time and is seen by those who lift their eyes in search of light to help them though the long, dark night. --Nilsson

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